


Bokeh

by HeyMurphy



Series: This Life Before Me [4]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Short & Sweet, Toki being a bit of a brat, a little angst because come on it's Magnus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:55:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27130744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyMurphy/pseuds/HeyMurphy
Summary: Combining the Kloktober prompts of "80s/90s fashion" and "working". Magnus is trying to get something done, but Toki's being distracting and finds something very interesting.
Relationships: Magnus Hammersmith/Toki Wartooth
Series: This Life Before Me [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780177
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	Bokeh

**Author's Note:**

> i gotta combine these two prompts or else i just know i'm gonna fall behind and playing catch-up stresses me out - so! please enjoy. u~u i have barely proofread this, i'm sorry haha

“Magnus, I’ms bored.”

Magnus looked up from his laptop to see Toki peeking over the back of the sofa at him like a prairie dog. “You’re bored, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Toki whined. “Nothins good on TV and I already beats my game. I wanna go _dos_ somesthing. Cans we sees a movie? Ohh—or gets a snow cones! I keeps seeins that place what’s by the bowling alley. Cans we go, Magnus? Please?”

“Toki—” Magnus leaned back in the kitchen chair and motioned to the laptop’s screen. “I’m working. I’m on a roll here, okay? Once I’m done with this chapter we’ll figure out something to do, I promise, but until then I need to focus.”

He could positively _feel_ Toki’s pout from across the living room. “Buts Maaagnuuuuus…”

“Look, there’s plenty of shit to do in the meantime.” Magnus searched around, trying to come up with something. “You, uh, you could _read_. We put together that huge bookshelf and you’ve never even touched anything on it.”

Toki’s face screwed up in revulsion. “ _Readins?_ ”

“Well, sure. Why not? I’ve seen you read before.”

“Likes...comics. And video games. But books ams different. Books haves too many words all close togethers.”

“I didn’t say read a _book_ ,” Magnus said quickly. “I’ve got comics. You’ve poked through those, right? Go grab Sandman. I keep telling you to read it and you won’t read it. It’s a classic series, man.”

Toki just let out a long, low wail in response. “I don’ts wants to _read_ , Magnus, I wants to gets out of the apartsment.”

“ _Okay_ , I hear you. In an hour, though. That’s all I need. If you can give me a good hour to finish this chapter, I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go.”

Toki fixed him with an irritated glare. “Fine. But I don’ts likes it. Startins to sounds like Charles whens he was too busys for us.”

“Ouch,” Magnus said with a bit of a startled laugh. He didn’t sound like Charles, did he? 

“Startins to looks like him, too.”

Magnus set his reading glasses on the table, blushing suddenly. “That’s a low blow, bud.”

Toki stuck out his tongue. Ah, so it was one of these moods. “Maybes a snow cones makes me nicer.”

He had to give Toki points for knowing exactly which buttons to push and when. It was almost an artform with him. Still, he stood his ground. It was good for Toki not to get his way sometimes. “Then you’ll have to be grumpy for the next hour. Sorry.”

“ _Sorry, meh_ ,” Toki snapped back in that crappy little tone of his. When he said nothing else, though, Magnus started typing and let Toki stew for a while. He heard the faint beeps and boops from some phone game or whatever, but after a few minutes of quiet Toki finally heaved a mighty sigh and dragged himself up and lumbered over to the bookshelf. Magnus watched, trying not to grin too hard. Didn’t wanna jinx it.

Scanning the shelves, Toki snagged a few books by the spine and tilted them out to look closer, but one by one he put them all back. He got down on his knees out of Magnus’ eyeline, shuffled a few things, and then went silent. After a minute or two of nothing, Magnus pushed his readers back up the bridge of his nose and went back to writing, content that Toki was busying himself.

Before too long, though, he heard a snicker. Just a soft one. But then there came another and another, and Magnus grumbled and shoved aside his laptop. “Hey, I appreciate you having fun over there, but it’s a little distracting.”

“Oh, sorries.” Another snicker and a snort of deeper laughter.

“What’re you reading? What’d you find?”

“Ams just a picture book,” Toki said innocently. 

A picture book? He didn’t have any picture— 

Magnus bolted up from the table and Toki scrambled to his feet and took off like a shot, racing through the living room and out into the hall. “Bring that back!” Toki ducked into the bedroom and Magnus ran to follow, chasing him until they stood stalemated on either side of the mattress, neither willing to make a break for it. Toki held the photo album tight to his chest, eyes wild and excited. “C’mon now, buddy. Honey. _Sweetie_. Just give it to me and no one gets hurt.”

“Nevers!” Toki tried to go around the bed, but it was a fakeout, and when Magnus took the bait he lunged over the mattress and tried to get to the door, but Magnus tackled him as he flew. They hit the floor in a heap together, limbs struggling, chests heaving. Toki easily overpowered him, pinning him to the floor with the sheer bulk of him and successfully plucking the photo album from Magnus’ hands.

“Toki...c’mon...”

“I wants to look,” Toki said, getting up and moving to sit on the bed. After a moment to collect himself and dwell on his defeat, Magnus sullenly followed and sunk into the mattress beside him to watch him crack open the album again. He’d forgotten he’d put it on the shelf. Must’ve been in a box with his other books. He certainly never expected Toki to end up finding it. 

“Who even ams these guys?” Toki asked, pointing to the photos on the first page under a yellowed protective plastic.

Magnus looked over the faces of his old friends, a gangly collection of crustpunks and deathrockers, all backcombed hair and dark makeup and torn denim and tattered leather. He hadn’t seen these people in decades, hadn’t thought about them in years. Not since Dethklok, really. 

“Well, that was my roommate at the time,” he said slowly, pointing to a spectral figure with a moon-white face and a sleek black duster posed by some concrete steps. “ _Armand_. Went apeshit if you called him Harry. Never had fucking rent on time but he had these cigarettes, these imports from Turkey or someplace over there, I dunno. Always let me bum a couple.” 

Toki giggled. “What’s about her?” he asked, his finger resting just to the left of a woman with wisps of purple hair like a thistle and thin painted-on eyebrows.

“Maggie,” Magnus said fondly. “Old flame. Nice girl.”

“Magnus and Maggie,” Toki sang.

“I know, I know. We never heard the end of it.”

Toki pointed out another, a man this time, wearing a ratty jean vest covered in patches and his dyed black hair standing up stick-straight in a mohawk. “This ones?”

“Oh, Bobby-boy,” Magnus said without thinking. Paused. Swallowed. “Uh, Bobby. _Robert_.” He cleared his throat. Too many memories attached to that scowling bulldog face, most of them memories he could do without.

Blue eyes narrowed. “You sleepeds with him.”

“Buddy, I _dated_ him. For almost a year.”

“ _Reallies?_ ”

“Yeah, _reallies_.”

Toki’s face pinched up even further. 

“Oh, what?” Magnus scoffed. “You judging my taste in partners? ‘Cause I’ve got news for you, dearest.”

Toki leaned in and kissed his cheek, laughing. “Not judgins you, just...surprised. Didn’ts thinks you woulds be into people what’s dressins like this.”

“Well—” Magnus shrugged helplessly. “This was kinda the look at the time, at least in the scenes I was into. And it’s, y’know...not a _bad_ look.”

“You wants Toki dressins like this?”

Magnus had the sudden mental snapshot of Toki’s abs in a shredded mesh top. Leather jacket, clove cigarette between black lips. Eyes made up, long hair dyed and teased to shit. Jesus Christ.

“I mean, if it’s something you might wanna...try sometime...” 

“Not reallies. Doesn’ts seem very brutal.”

“Oh come on. This was, what? Eighty-eight? Eighty-nine? What were you doing in eighty-nine that was so brutal, huh? Being born?”

Toki assumed the pensive, searching expression of someone doing math in their head, and after a moment he said, “Playins black metal in Norways. Livins in the basement of a record shops.”

Magnus frowned. “Okay, fine, you win.”

Still giggling, Toki flipped through a few more pages, and Magnus was treated to a sudden slew of memories. Delilah with those twin ankhs painted on both her plump cheeks like tears. Adam reading Slaughterhouse-Five in the velvet armchair at Joplin’s old studio apartment, his buckled Chelsea boots up on the ottoman. Stuart and Harry sharing a joint outside The Mason Jar. Maggie and Delilah draped over each other in some late-night diner in Tempe.

“Hm,” Toki mused, turning a couple additional pages and then stopping.

“What is it?”

“I don’ts sees _you_.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause I was always behind the camera.”

Toki stared at a group photo of about a dozen people, smiling, arms around one another, open pizza boxes and beer bottles littering two coffee tables shoved together. Joplin’s moving-away party. “Ams a little sad, I think,” Toki said. “If you ams always behinds the camera, you nots really there withs your friends. You ams kinda...separates from them.”

“Guess so,” Magnus said, resting a bit of his weight against Toki’s side. “That was probably the point, to sorta keep myself at arm’s length. You know how I operate.”

Toki kissed his forehead and turned another page, then another. Adam and Stuart playing cards in the backseat of Magnus’ old ‘79 Charger. Delilah showing off a birthday cake she’d decorated for Harry. He reached the final page, the last photo, and Magnus averted his eyes out of habit. He knew exactly what was there.

“Oh,” Toki said, something like wonder in his voice. “Ams _you_.”

“Ughhh.”

“No, looks at you!” 

There stood Magnus, just over thirty probably, holding his camera at chest-level in front of a spattered public bathroom mirror adorned around the edges in etchings and other graffiti. Was that The Mason Jar? Or Sun Club? He was in his favorite jacket before the black denim, the chocolate brown corduroy bomber with that big cigarette burn in the left pocket, and damn, he missed that Meat Puppets shirt. His hair was uncombed and grungy, curly and shoulder-length and limp with grease, his beard trimmed close to his chin in a strip. A cigarette poked out of a snarling mouth, and his eyes were cast down at the sink. 

“Moody little bastard, wasn’t I?”

Toki elbowed him. “Ams _stills_ a moodys little bastard.”

“That’s fair.”

“You looks so cute, though. Ams you younger than me ins this picture?”

“Yeah. Seems like two lifetimes ago, honestly.”

Toki’s chin came to rest on his shoulder. “Why amn’ts you writins about this stuff?”

“What do you mean?”

“The mem-rawr you workins on. Ams only abouts your time in Dethkloks ands the years after, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Buts this—” Toki gestured to the album. “This ams your life, too. You never talks about it. You tolds me a little abouts your family and growins up and stuff, but nots this. Seems importants.”

Magnus stared at himself in the photo. “I don’t even know who this guy is anymore. So much of who I am is because of Dethklok.” He scratched at his stubbly cheek and sighed. “I guess I just...finally felt like myself when I was with the band. Like until then I’d just been waiting for my life to start, so everything that came before, all the bullshit, it mattered less. Kinda blurred apart in my mind. Just colors and shapes. There's a word for that. Some photography word, I forget. But, uh, y'know what I mean, right? About the band?"

The head against his shoulder was still for a moment and Magnus worried he'd rambled too much, but then Toki nodded. “Yeps. Ams a good feelins.”

“Yeah, it was.” Magnus took a deep breath and closed the album, and Toki sat up straight and looked at him lovingly.

“Do you feels that way with me?”

“Huh?”

“Likes you can bes yourself?”

Magnus sat there and thought about it. Or rather, he didn’t think about it. And hadn’t been thinking about it for some time. It wasn’t like with Bobby or Maggie or Joplin or—well, it didn’t matter who else. All that mattered was the way Toki looked at him now, that sunny smile lighting up the shadowed crags of Magnus’ withered heart. 

“Yeah,” he said simply. "I do." And he kissed him. Just a gentle kiss, but he hoped his gratitude carried.

Toki actually seemed somewhat shy when they parted. “Sorries I calleds you Charles.” Magnus reached up to touch his reading glasses, but Toki took his hand and held it. “And sorries I bothereds you while you was writins.”

“Oh. No, it’s fine.” Magnus brushed a thumb over soft knuckles. “I, uh...I think I’ve got some serious rewrites ahead of me. Could probably stand to get out of the apartment, clear my head for while.”

“You means it?”

“Yeah.” Magnus smiled, happy to realize just how easily these smiles came to him now. “Y’think a snow cone would help?”

Toki threw arms around his neck and hugged him close.


End file.
